Sunset and Highland in broad daylight. Its a tricky place. Exhaust
Swirls like tumbleweeds around ankles and antennae, part of the landscape.
It is a landscape of shifting currencies. A lotta skin.
Of high concept and tripods.
(Mostly, currency)

His name is Richard. Sometimes he sleeps w/ a woman named Ellen.
And once he hiked up to the Hollywood sign
On a bet. He was gone all night and Ellen fell asleep (and waited)
In the bedroom window.

He remembers things differently from Ellen
He doesnt hold the past like
A grudge or an inside straight. (Like Ellen does)

He avoids the eyes of strangers.

*

His mother had one good eye.

She longed for depth perception above all else
And wouldnt respond when he spoke.

When he reached the age of consent
He got married in Tijuana
And never told her.

They still laugh about it.

She didnt work and he would go with her downtown,
On Tuesdays, to the unemployment office

*

She wont leave him alone with words.

Words alone offer no solace: Only movie trailers, a quickie divorce
Can settle accounts and wake the nations
Like the ruby crucifix that dangles from his ear.

When she reminds him that the diminutive of his name
Is a vulgar synonym for penis
He finds himself unable to get it up.
With no hope of retribution.
Or redemption.

*

His mother had a butterfly tattoo on her butt.
She made him take her to the parlor in the valley
And watch while a skinny guy with reptile eyes
And roses on his forearms bled her

He knew then that faith was a bad mix with desire.
They havent discussed it since. Its enough that she was

His chrysalis, his own blood metamorphosed into a butterfly.

*

In a perfect world Richard is a reporter
You make your own choices. and uses a lot of different
bylines because hes convinced
Cash up front. the CIA is after him. When
Ellen laughs at him,
The higher order she holds his face
Needs no evidence. in her hands. Sometimes
it really pisses him off.
Cash.

*

Its not without pastoral elements:

Round the bend on the 405 just past Reseda
Forsaking the coast highway
Slicing south through six lanes of burnt grass and bedroom windows
L.A. grins back like a rancid tumor
Flayed open from no particular center.

Gogols Petersburg or Eliots London
Would float in a silver cloud or recoil into myth.
Opal Jaundice Zygotes of red and green leave only